East Lansing residents honor Robert Green, the man who helped integrate their town

EAST LANSING — Nearly 60 years after he bought his first home in East Lansing, Dr. Robert Green returned to 207 Bessemaur Drive flanked by dignitaries and admirers.

Green was honored in two separate ceremonies Friday morning for his role in challenging racist housing practices that kept East Lansing segregated into the 1960s. The retired Michigan State University professor first visited Pinecrest Elementary, which was renamed Robert L. Green Elementary in his honor and which his children were some of the first students to integrate decades ago.

Later, Green marched to the Bessemaur house with Martin Luther King III, Ernest Green of the Little Rock Nine and dozens of students and community members, where a historical marker was dedicated to his work.

Green has become a somewhat accidental civil rights icon in East Lansing. After earning his Ph.D. from MSU in 1962, he began searching for a home for he and his wife, Lettie. They were blocked by racist real estate agents that refused to sell to Black buyers, sparking mass protests on campus and in East Lansing. Eventually, he and then-attorney Carl Levin mounted a legal challenge against an East Lansing brokerage citing President John F. Kennedy's executive order banning housing discrimination — the first successful challenge to redlining in East Lansing.

Green won, but declined to buy from that brokerage in the end, later finding the house on Bessemaur. But his challenge helped inspire a fair housing ordinance in East Lansing years later.

"As an American who's been involved in civil rights in the past, I want to make sure that everybody is treated fairly," Green said in an interview Thursday.

More: Robert Green, who beat racist East Lansing housing policies, to be honored Friday

Several people who worked with Green over the years spoke Friday. Among them was Martin Luther King III, whose father was close friends with Green.

The younger King, 63, recalled in an interview Friday that Green helped his mother, Coretta Scott King, establish the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta after his father's murder. King said he and his siblings were practically raised by Green and his wife, who they affectionately called Uncle Bob and Auntie Lettie.

King marveled at the diversity of East Lansing today, noting that the now diverse Green Elementary once had only a few Black students. After marching with those students to Bessemaur Drive, he said social justice movements are often led by the young.

"Since Black Lives Matters existed, which is over 10 years, we're still seeing a lot of young student engagement and young people across the country," King said. "I think that's tremendous. That's not going anywhere."

Leaders look ahead at work to be done

Both King and Green remarked on the work left to be done to achieve racial equity in the U.S. and beyond.

King pointed to issues his father fought against that have reinvented themselves today and afflict different groups.

"There will be a point where we have achieved civil rights permanently, and it will be etched in history, and we'll look back on it," King said. "But we are not at that point now."

Green pointed to a statement made by Vice President Kamala Harris earlier in the day about the U.S.'s treatment of Haitian migrants at the southern border. 

"Today we have many more social justice issues that we have identified," Green said. 

Added his wife: "We thought we had it bad (in the 1960s). It's changed, but there are (still) problems."

Marker at Bessemaur Drive: What the complaint established for East Lansing 

Ernest Green, one of nine Black students who enrolled in the segregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957, said the fight for social justice is in need of "tremendous oversight" by those concerned with equity. Despite countless laws passed to dignify the rights of all, many remain disenfranchised, as evidenced by Robert Green's fight to buy property, he said.

He urged young people to continue fighting for racial justice today, taking pointers from his and others' playbooks in the 1950s and '60s. 

"You got to be willing to, as a young person, try to be prepared for the best but also expect that you're going to have to fight for an opening, an opportunity, a job promotion," he said. 

Start of a movement: East Lansing protests to dismantle housing discrimination

Looking back on his own experience as a student activist, Ernest Green urged today's young people to carry on Robert Green's fight.

"There's so much more work to be done, and we couldn't get to where we are today without Bob Green."

Contact reporter Krystal Nurse at (517) 267-1344 or knurse@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @KrystalRNurse.